Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you’ve heard of Alice in Wonderland; at the least your curiosity might have been piqued enough to read it after seeing The Matrix, or be mistaken in thinking that you don’t need to read the book if you saw Tim Burton’s film with Johnnie Depp. The sequel to Lewis Carroll’s most famous work (mentioned above), called “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There“, written in 1871, contains the famous nonsensical poem called the Jabberwocky, which I present here:

“Jabberwocky”

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Many of the nonsensical words are what Lewis Carroll (aka Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) coined as “portmanteau words” meaning the combination of both sound and meaning of two words into one; e.g. frumious being “fuming” and “furious”. Some of the words have since made it into the English language, such as galumph or chortle, while some were words he revived, such as gyre and beamish. And personally I think some of his words deserve wider use, such as brilling, slithy,snicker-snack and Bandersnatch! Click on the photo to the right to hear the poem read.

Now… “what is the Totemügerli,” I hear you ask? It is the Swiss-German version – not a translation, but an original story by Franz Hohler, a Swiss cabaret performer; Bernese German, to be more precise. Bern is the political capital of Switzerland, and historically has one of the richest, most colourful dialects of all the Swiss German dialects; I am fluent in the Zürich dialect, and can understand all the other Swiss-German dialects, including Walliserdïïtsch, which is the oldest of all Swiss dialects; and I can guarantee you that the Totemügerli story is 90% nonsense, and yet tells a clear tale! For those of you interested in the text, here it is:

Spam mail is a ubiquitous part of blogging, and usually I just trash it; but I got one today relating to this post that just made me laugh out loud; it said, “This blog was… how do I say it? Relevant!! Finally I have found something which helped me. Cheers!” Right. It was coming from Thailand, so I seriously doubt they could read it, let alone find it relevant to their language skills (I wonder how long they’d searched for two fake languages before they FINALLY came across my post…), but it gave me a smile so I thought I’d share it!